Kusari
The swords broke like glass.
One after another at first—hairline fractures running through steel made from Yuuto-san’s will and Issei-san’s power—then all at once, the whole field of blades shattered into silver fragments that fell around the sports court in slow, glittering ruin.
Yuuto-san was gone.
That remained the only part that mattered.
Not the broken lines of Sword Birth.
Not the false night over the court.
Not the ache in my chest from too many Stillmarks, burn in my arms from Baleful bolts, and the drag in my legs from Misstep.
Only the absence.
Yuuto-san was the constant of Rias-Buchou’s peerage.
Calm.
Polite.
Steadfast.
The type of a person who knew exactly where she intended to stand and why.
Now the court looked incorrectly empty without her in it.
Issei-san stood half a step ahead of me, breathing hard enough that I could hear the shape of his anger before he turned toward it.
Blood still marked his face. He looked up with rage and hatred on his face. He looked ready to launch forward recklessly, regardless of the outcome.
Above us, a figure hovered in the air.
The [Queen], Yubelluna.
The air around her held the same smug, poisoned feel it had at the gym, but closer now, more personal in its cruelty because the empty space where Yuuto-san had been was still visible between Issei-san and I.
“The [Knight], eliminated,” she said.
Her voice carried down with cold amusement, as if the sentence were not pulling at someone’s heart but an observation about the weather.
Issei-san snapped.
“Were you the one who took out Yuuto-san and Akeno-san!?”
His shout ripped across the ruined court so hard it made the last silver fragments of Sword Birth seem even quieter by contrast.
He stepped forward, gauntlet blazing, fury already outrunning reason.
“I’ll kill you! Come down here! Koneko-chan, Akeno-san, Yuuto-san—I’ll pay you back for all of them! Come down!”
The Queen smiled.
Not because his anger frightened her.
Because it did not.
She tilted her wings once, just enough to show she had already decided the direction of the next part of the battle.
“You?” she asked. “A noisy Pawn who already reeks of exhaustion? How endearing.”
Her gaze moved to me then.
Three silver-white tails were visible behind me now, no longer hidden. There was no longer any point.
They shifted once in the false wind of the battlefield, bright and real and impossible to mistake for anything human.
I felt Yubelluna register them, the way fighters register any change that might make a fight less simple than they had planned.
But her smile returned almost immediately.
“You as well?” she said lightly. “A little fox with cruel tricks.”
Issei-san took another step.
“Shut up and get down here!”
Yubelluna gave a short laugh and angled upward instead, the beginning of retreat or bait or both. She was moving toward the new school building.
Toward the rooftop. Toward Rias-buchou and Asi-san. Where this battle would decide what it intended to become.
Not to retreat.
A lure..
I saw it at once.
The Queen did not need to defeat Issei-san here.
She only needed him to spend himself wrong before he reached the place he mattered most.
He started after her.
Of course he did.
And this time I moved before Yubella’s voice or any other reminder of the plan could reach him.
I caught his arm.
He turned on me, teeth bared with anger and hurt, red aura flaring, grief and anger making his eyes too harsh in the artificial light.
“What!?”
“Stop.”
“She’s going to Buchou!”
“Yes.” I tightened my grip once. “And you running after her like this is exactly what she wants.”
That made him hesitate.
Not enough.
“You think I’m just going to let her go after what she did!?”
I stepped in front of him before he could force the line past me.
The tails behind me spread slightly on instinct.
“Listen.”
He looked ready to shake me off and run anyway.
That meant I had to say it more sharply.
“Follow Buchou’s plan.”
The words cut through.
Because they were correct.
His face twisted.
“I know the damn plan!”
“No.” I took one breath and made myself say the rest clearly enough that even his rage could not mishear it. “You know you’re mad. The plan is for promotion.”
That stopped him.
Yubelluna, still in the air above the court, had gone from openly amused to watchful. Let her wonder which of us I intended to keep and which I intended to throw at her.
Issei-san’s jaw clenched.
“The plan was for both of us to promote. I’m not leaving you here with her.”
“Then you are leaving Buchou without the piece she needs.”
His eyes flashed. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what.”
“You know exactly what.”
Yes.
I did.
I held his gaze anyway.
“The enemy base is inside the new school building,” I said. “You reach it. You promote to [Queen]. Then you go to Rias.”
Not Buchou.
The name came naturally now.
That was not the problem in this moment.
The problem was getting Issei to choose correctly before his rage became movement.
He actually shook his head.
“She’ll take you out too.”
Yubelluna laughed softly overhead.
“How sweet,” she said. “The pervert worries for the fox girl.
I ignored her.
“I am not staying to win cleanly,” I said. “I am staying to make her late.”
That made him look at me properly for the first time since Yuuto-san vanished.
Because that was the truth of it.
I did not need to defeat Yubelluna outright.
I needed to delay.
Waste her time.
Make every moment ugly and expensive until Issei-san had passed the point where her interference still mattered.
That was my kind of battle.
“The plan,” I repeated. “Promotion first. Rias after.”
He was still breathing too hard.
Still bleeding.
Still furious enough that the air around his gauntlet pulsed in uneven red waves.
But he was listening now.
So I gave him the last part.
“As an apology for what happened,” I said quietly, “you mastered Dress Break.”
He went still.
Now I had his attention completely.
“Then do not waste what that control bought you,” I said. “Use it correctly. Go forward.”
The guilt in his face hit under the rage for one visible second.
Then he frowned and looked disgusted.
“I’m not using it on Riser.”
“That’s not what I meant at all.”
“I just wanted to make sure!”
Yubelluna drifted lower, just enough that the threat in the air became immediate.
“I do so enjoy this,” she said. “You are discussing strategy as if either of you is in a position to choose.”
Thankfully she had the curtesy to ignore what was just said.
I finally looked up at her.
Then, because there was no reason not to make the fight worse for her before it began, I planted Stillmark directly into the middle of the air of the sports court between us.
The sigil flattened into exsistance.
Cold spread beneath my sternum, slower than it had a week ago, steadier.
Yubelluna’s smile thinned.
“Go,” I said to Issei-san.
He did not move.
“Kusari—”
“Issei.”
His head snapped toward me.
The use of his name landed harder than if I had shouted.
I did not have time to decide what that meant.
“Go,” I said again. “If you stay, then Kiba-san’s words are wasted too.”
That did it.
His expression broke around the edges—not into weakness, not into tears, but into the kind of pain that had no answer available except obedience to the person who had addressed it correctly.
He swore under his breath.
Then he looked at Yubelluna, looked at me, and hated the shape of the choice enough that I knew he had finally accepted it.
“Don’t die,” he said.
What an absurd thing to ask of someone.
I let the corner of my mouth move by almost nothing.
“Don’t waste your promotion.”
That was the closest thing to reassurance he was getting.
He bared his teeth in something that wasn’t quite a grin.
“Right.”
Then he ran.
Not at the Queen.
Past the sports court.
Toward the new school building.
Toward the route where promotion waited and Rias needed him.
Yubelluna watched him go for one heartbeat too long. She was lifting an arm to launch a spell at his back.
I used that heartbeat.
Misstep.
One ordinary step, and the world lied around me.
The drain of using the ability bit deeper, but I saw the disorientation of it in Yubelluna’s eyes as I came out of the shift far enough across the court that her pursuit line to Issei-san became towards me instead. Her wings corrected too hard.
Her altitude dipped and she lost the form of the spell she was forming.
The strangeness of the movement touched her just long enough to matter.
She recovered fast.
“Annoying,” she said.
“Thank you.”
The sports court had become ours now in a different way.
No Yuuto-san.
No Isabella.
No Carlamine.
No Ravel.
Only broken ground, scattered silver remnants of vanished swords, one wrong mark in the painted center, and the Queen between me and the route Issei-san had taken.
My three tails moved behind me without glamour now, visible and bright against the false battlefield night. The second tail’s gift still dragged at my stamina when used. The third thinned the certainty of where exactly I stood in the eye. Stillmark waited in the air. Baleful Bolt burned ready somewhere in the back of my hand.
Yubelluna descended another few feet, smile returning in a more focused shape.
“So,” she said. “You really mean to hold me here.”
I let Fox-Glamour breathe softly across the edges of my body—not enough to hide, only enough to make her eyes work for what they saw.
“Yes.”
She raised one hand.
Magic gathered in the curve of her fingers.
The field narrowed.
Behind me, I could hear Issei-san’s footsteps fading deeper into the route that mattered.
That was all I needed.
I lowered my center of gravity and let curse-light gather between my fingers.
Then the [Queen] and I faced each other properly for the first time, with no one else between us and nowhere left to pretend the battle wanted anything but delay, damage, and time.
The sports court went quiet around us.
And then we began.